Jorit Ciro Cerullo (born 24 November 1990),[1] known mononymously as Jorit, is an Italian street artist. He is known for painting murals depicting faces of people with red streaks on their cheeks.
Jorit | |
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| Born | Jorit Ciro Cerullo 24 November 1990 Quarto, Italy |
| Alma mater | Naples Academy of Fine Arts |
| Signature | |
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Childhood and education
editJorit was born in Quarto on the northern perimeter of Naples. His father, Luigi Cerullo,[2] was a Neapolitan and his mother, Jeannina,[3] was Dutch. After studying at the scientific lyceum Galileo Galilei in Naples, he attended the Naples Academy of Fine Arts,[4] obtaining a first class degree.[5]
His interest in street art began when he was 13 years old. Jorit has defined his approach as one of picking out ordinary faces from the working class to embody famous people, in the style of Caravaggio. Thus, his depiction at Forcella, Naples of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, draws on features of a 35-year-old friend who is a factory worker.[6]
Graffiti artist
editIn the murals made by Jorit there are "hidden" writings, words and phrases that often expand the meaning of the works. They were collected for the first time by Vincenzo De Simone, a Neapolitan psychologist and photographer, as part of the "La gente di Napoli" photoproject.[citation needed]
In 2023, Il Giornale estimated the typical value of a graffiti work by Jorit at €25,000. Jorit earlier won a competition for funding from the Campania region at a value of €300,000.[7]
Notable street murals
editIn August 2019, Jorit painted the face of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, on the facade of a twenty-story building in the district of Odintsovo, Russia. At the base of the mural is "СССР", the abbreviation for the official name of the Soviet Union in the Russian alphabet.[8][9][10] It is the largest portrait of Gagarin in the world.[11]
On 22 February 2021, he painted the face of Valerio Verbano on the facade of a building in Rome. Verbano was an Italian communist militant, killed in 1980 in an ambush by three fascists who had entered his home.[12]
In Florence, Jorit published a mural depicting the young Antonio Gramsci in 2020. In the wall is Gramsci's words: "Even when all is or seems lost, one must quietly set to work again, starting from the beginning ... The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old dies and the new cannot be born".[13]
Painting in the West Bank and expulsion from Israel
edit
Jorit and another artist Salvatore Tukios were detained for three days after painting a mural depicting a Palestinian adolescent activist, Ahed Tamimi, who had become an iconic figure among Palestinians after slapping the face of an Israeli soldier outside her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih. The mural – whose completion was scheduled to coincide with Tamimi's release from an 8-month prison sentence – was set on the Bethlehem side of Israel's Separation Barrier.[14][15] Upon their return to Naples on 30 July, their families, waiting at the airport, asked that no photos be taken, as they wished to remain anonymous.[16][17]
Russo-Ukrainian war
editAfter Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Jorit stated that Italy should have been supporting the Russian-backed separatists of the Donbas region in Ukraine since 2014.[18][19]
Jorit made a mural in Naples of Fyodor Dostoevsky, in whose eye is a child in the colours of the Russia-controlled Donetsk People's Republic. He argued that the issue had to be seen from 2014, and that the peoples of the Donbas had self-determined through two referendums, and that children of the two republics had been killed by the Ukrainian army for eight years.[20] His street art was mentioned by Russian president Vladimir Putin during the invasion of Ukraine to illustrate his view that it would be impossible to obliviate Russian culture.[21]
Jorit described a mural of a young girl that he made in July 2023 on a bombed-out building in occupied Mariupol (after a siege that the Red Cross called "apocalyptic"), as seeking to present a narrative of the bombing of the city and its inhabitants by "NATO missiles".[22] He also said the mural was "a living little girl from Donbas who spent her first years in Mariupol surrounded by war".[22] Australian photographer Helen Whittle protested that the mural is based on a photo of her daughter and unauthorized.[22][23] Jorit later said he had come across the photo by searching on Google for "pigtails", and he had redrawn the shirt and the pigtails.[22] Jorit's mural was criticised on the basis that the bombs that killed children in Mariupol were Russian, and that the Mariupol hospital airstrike was attributed to Russian forces.[22] Critics also questioned the appropriateness of Jorit's mural after Russian forces had previously removed a mural by Sasha Korban in Mariupol that depicted a Ukrainian girl who lost her leg and her mother in an artillery rocket attack by pro-Russian separatist forces in 2015.[7][22][24]
Acknowledgments
editJorit was nominated by Michelina Manzillo, Knight of the Italian Republic, for the 2023 Wolf Prize.[25]
References
edit- ^ "Napoli – Jorit Agoch racconta su Instagram la sua odissea in Israele". Monitore Napolitano (in Italian). 2 August 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
- ^ Del Porto 2018.
- ^ TG 2018.
- ^ Guida 2016.
- ^ Maselli 2016.
- ^ De Rosa 2015.
- ^ a b Angelo Allegri (14 July 2023). "Jorit, il graffitaro finanziato dalla Campania che dipinge murales per gli occupanti russi" [Jorit, the graffiti artist funded by Campania who paints murals for Russian occupants]. Il Giornale (in Italian). ISSN 1124-8831. Wikidata Q120791946. Archived from the original on 21 July 2023.
- ^ "Jorit, il Bansky italiano approda in Russia: a Mosca un suo murales gigante dedicato a Gagarin". it.rbth.com (in Italian). 30 August 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "Jorit, la sua arte approda in Russia: un murale dedicato a Jurij Gagarin". 2anews.it. 21 August 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "La nuova opera di Jorit è in Russia: un murale dedicato a Yuri Gagarin". bonculture.it (in Italian). 20 August 2019. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
- ^ "AUTHOR OF LARGEST GAGARIN GRAFFITI VISITED STAR CITY". russkiymir.ru. 21 August 2019. Retrieved 30 November 2020.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Valerio Verbano: a Roma un gigantesco murale firmato Jorit". ansa.it (in Italian). 19 February 2021.
- ^ https://www.finestresullarte.info/en/contemporary-art/here-s-jorit-s-new-mural-a-213-square-meter-gramsci-at-florence[permanent dead link] -s-housing-projects
- ^ Ma'an 2018.
- ^ Reuters 2018.
- ^ La Stampa 2018.
- ^ "Israele, rilasciati Jorit e Salvatore". Roma (in Italian). Retrieved 8 April 2021.
- ^ Redazione online (13 July 2023). "Jorit, un murale a Mariupol su un palazzo colpito dai russi. E si schiera dalla parte di Mosca". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 15 July 2023.
The resistance that we should have supported is that of the people of the Donbas, who have been fighting for eight years to get rid of a regime, the Kyiv regime, that now has nothing democratic about it.
- ^ "Hanno tutti ragione | Un capolavoro di vergogna, lo street artist italiano che decora i palazzi sventrati da Putin". la Repubblica (in Italian). 14 July 2023. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
- ^ "Jorit, Dostoevskij e Putin". la7.it (in Italian).
- ^ "Italian street artist paints mural in support of Donbass children in Mariupol". TASS. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f Tondo, Lorenzo (19 July 2023). "Photographer criticises use of image in Italian artist's pro-Russia mural". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 20 July 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
- ^ Redazione online (15 July 2023). "Perché si parla del murale di Jorit a Mariupol". Corriere del Ticino (in Italian). Retrieved 18 July 2023.
- ^ Piero Sorrentino (17 July 2023). "Le fiamme di Pistoletto e le bombe di Jorit" [Pistoletto's flames and Jorit's bombs]. Il Mattino (in Italian). ISSN 1592-3908. Wikidata Q120837341. Archived from the original on 23 July 2023.
- ^ Armiero, Mirella (6 December 2022). "Jorit in lizza per il Wolf Prize 2023". Corriere del Mezzogiorno (in Italian). Retrieved 16 July 2023.
General references
edit- "Betlemme, rilasciati i due street artist italiani" (in Italian). TgCom24. 29 July 2018.
- Del Porto, Dario (30 July 2018). "Liberato Jorit, lo street artist Napolitano arrestato a Betlemme". La Repubblica (in Italian).
- "Graffiti artists detained for giant mural of al-Tamimi". Ma'an News Agency. 29 July 2018.
- Guida, Felicia (23 May 2016). "Fedez e San Gennaro nei graffiti iperrealisti di Jorit Agoch" (in Italian). ArtSpecialDay.com.
- Maselli, Angela (24 November 2016). "Intervista a Jorit Agoch. Il racconto del sogno americano" (in Italian). Arts Life.
- Reuters (28 July 2018). "Israel Arrests Italian Artists Who Painted a West Bank Mural of Ahed Tamimi". Haaretz.
- De Rosa, Anna Laura (16 September 2015). "Il San Gennaro operaio di Jorit per far rinascere Forcella". La Repubblica.
- "Torna a casa Jorit Agoch, lo street artist arrestato a Betlemme". La Stampa (in Italian). 30 July 2018.